How I Saved £751 On My Holiday

Donna Werbner set herself a mission: to cut the costs of her summer holiday, using only the internet - and a Foolish nose for a bargain!

Suitcase: check. Long-suffering boyfriend: check. Spending money: umm...

I'm going on holiday next week, which is all well and good except for the fact that I'm also trying to save 25% of my net income every month. And unfortunately, saving and holidaying don't go together well.

So this week, I set myself a mission: to cut the cost of my holiday as much as possible.

Here's how I saved hundreds and hundreds of pounds -- using only the internet and keenly-developed Foolish nose for a bargain.

Transport

We're off to the Emerald Isle, where I'm told leprechauns dance and four leaf clovers abound -- especially after a couple of pints of Guinness! So my first challenge was to figure out whether we would be better off going by ferry or by plane to Dublin.

Personally, I assumed the ferry would be cheaper. We're planning a bit of a road trip, and by taking my mother's banged-up Peugeot on the ferry, we would save on car hire costs too.

I was shocked to discover that the cheapest ferry fare I could find going from Liverpool to Dublin next week was an eye-popping £277. On top of that, we'd incur train costs to pick up the car from my folks and then petrol costs to drive to Liverpool. And then we'd have to add on the costs of international car insurance, along with Irish car breakdown cover. Ouch!

Flights from London were much more reasonable. I shopped around, using several flight comparison sites, and found Aer Lingus was offering return flights for around £100 each (including taxes). But none of the sites I used included any information from budget airlines Ryanair and easyjet. 

So I tried them both directly and discovered I could get two return flights for just £50 from Ryanair! Bargain, I thought. but then came all the charges.

This brought the grand total for two return flights to £151.32, with the charges adding an extra 51% to the fares! While it was still the cheapest deal I could find, I was not impressed, especially since the fees seemed unavoidable.

Or so I thought. Actually, I could have probably persuaded my much better half to share a large single bag with me, cutting our check-in and luggage costs in half -- a saving of £24.

Unfortunately, I didn't think of this until a smart-alec. sorry, a kind friend.. pointed it out to me in the pub.  And Ryanair charges are non-refundable. Damn.

TOTAL SAVING: £402.68

TOTAL LOSS: £24

Car hire

The next step was to book some cheap car hire for our 11-day trip. Again, I used several different car rental comparison sites to compare prices.

What kind of car should I go for? Some of the sites I used automatically ticked the boxes for air conditioning and an automatic transmission -- which meant I could only find cars that cost around £31 a day (around £350).

By un-ticking these boxes, however, I could find much cheaper cars. The best deal was from easycar, at a cost of just £12.35 a day, plus a £0.99 booking charge.

And, because I booked it via Quidco, a cashback website, I managed to reduce this by 9%, saving me £12.31 and bringing the total cost down to £123.54.

However, I've just run a new search on carrentals.co.uk today, three days before our trip, and it seems that waiting until now to book would have netted even more savings. A car is now available from 121carhire.com for just £115. Bummer.

TOTAL SAVING: £226.46

TOTAL LOSS: £8.46

But at least I can save on the excess damage waiver. This is insurance against having to pay the excess on the car if we damage it. Personally, I'd never hire a car without it, because you never know whether you will be blamed for a dent caused by the previous renter, which went unnoticed.

If I'd waited to buy this at Dublin airport, it would have cost me £11.50 a day (so £126.50 in total). If I'd opted to buy it direct from Ryanair, it would have cost me £5.99 a day (so £65.89 in total). Instead I bought it from carhire-excess-insurance.com for just £1.90 a day (just £20.90 in total).

TOTAL SAVING: £105.60

Holiday cash

What about my holiday cash? If I picked it up from the airport, the exchange rate would be _1.17 for £1. But after reading my Foolish friend Jane Baker's article, The Cheapest Place To Get Your Holiday Cash, I decided to head over to a nearby Marks & Spencer Bureau de Change for my Euros. The exchange rate there was higher at _1.20 per £1, but more importantly, because I exchanged £250, I got a £10 M&S voucher for free.

TOTAL SAVING: £16.40

And finally..

My final money-saving move was to call up my mobile phone provider, O2, and ask them whether I could save any money on my phone-bills while I was abroad. Turns out I could add an `Ireland bolt-on', for free, which would reduce the cost of my calls by 10p a minute. (Read Don't Get Stung By Your Mobile Phone Abroad for more tips like this.) Probably won't save me much, but I just love getting something for nothing all the same.

So how much did I manage to save in total? An incredible £751.14! Woo-hoo!

Sadly, I also missed out on around £32.46 of savings that were potentially available - so I could have done even better. (Sigh.) I'm trying not to beat myself up about this too much though. And at least the savings will make my long-suffering boyfriend happy!

How about you? Do you have any money-saving holiday tips for your fellow Fools? Which websites would you particularly recommend if you're trying to plan a holiday like mine? Please share your tips using the comments box below!

More: Pay Nothing For Your Holiday!